AMD Refreshes Product Lineup with New Six-Core, Other Chips.

Advanced Micro Devices on Tuesday announced several new desktop processors that increase performance if the company's affordable grades of chips. In particular, AMD increased performance of dual-core and quad-core central processing units (CPUs) and introduced a new six-core product.

As expected, the three key desktop processors announced today are AMD Phenom II X6 1075T (hexa-core, 3.0GHz/3.50GHz TurboCore with 9MB of cache), AMD Phenom II X4 970 Black Edition (quad-core, 3.50GHz, 8MB of cache) as well as AMD Phenom II X2 560 (dual-core, 3.30GHz, 7MB cache). The chips will cost approximately $250, $190 and $105 in the order of mentioning.

The new Phenom II X6 1075T broadens AMD's lineup of six-core chips, which prove to be pretty popular among enthusiasts. Meanwhile, the models X4 970 BE and X2 560 BE are AMD's fastest quad-core and dual-core chips, respectively.

Considering the fact that TurboCore clock-speed of the six-core model 1075T will be 3.50GHz, the difference in price between it and the quad-core Phenom II X4 970 BE is rather significant as the chips have equal performance in applications that require up to four threads; as a result, AMD needed to avoid internal competition between six-core and quad-core products.

AMD decided to noteworthy update of the microprocessor lineup in late September, in the last days of the third quarter. The move shows that the world's second largest supplier of microprocessors is gearing up for Christmas sales season and attempts to strengthen its product offerings. It is also remarkable that AMD did not introduce any new CPUs specifically for back-to-school season this year.

In addition, AMD also started to sell several other chips, including quad-core AMD Athlon II X4 645 (3.1GHz, 2MB L2 cache) microprocessor that will cost around ~$100 and will be aimed at advanced systems in budget.